Sent!

Posted!

Other voices: The long war to come

Published 2:41 p.m. ET Nov. 17, 2015

TOPSHOTS A youth looks at floral tributes laid near the "Belle Equipe" restaurant, the site of one of the attacks in Paris on November 14, 2015. Islamic State jihadists claimed a series of coordinated attacks by gunmen and suicide bombers in Paris that killed at least 128 people in scenes of carnage at a concert hall, restaurants and the national stadium. AFP PHOTO / LIONEL BONAVENTURELIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP/Getty Images(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

Last Friday, Islamic State terrorists carried out a series of coordinated attacks in Paris that killed at least 130 people, causing a global outpouring of outrage and sympathy. The strikes highlighted a disturbing and dramatic increase in the number of large-scale terrorist attacks — and raised uncomfortablequestions about why some deaths receive so little attention from Western media.

A report released on Monday from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a research center based at the University of Maryland, said the number of strikes killing more than 100 civilians averaged about 4.2 per year between 1978 and 2013. In 2014, that figure skyrocketed more than 500 percent, to 26. In the first half of 2015, START counted 11 more. The majority of the attacks have taken place in Africa and the Middle East.

In a nationally televised speech last September explaining his plan to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS, U.S. President Barack Obama drew a straight line between the group and al Qaeda and claimed that ISIS is “a terrorist organization, pure and simple.” This was mistaken; ISIS hardly fits that description, and indeed, although it uses terrorism as a tactic, it is not really a terrorist organization at all. Terrorist networks, such as al Qaeda, generally have only dozens or hundreds of members, attack civilians, do not hold territory, and cannot directly confront military forces. ISIS, on the other hand, boasts some 30,000 fighters, holds territory in both Iraq and Syria, maintains extensive military capabilities, controls lines of communication, commands infrastructure, funds itself, and engages in sophisticated military operations. If ISIS is purely and simply anything, it is a pseudo-state led by a conventional army. And that is why the counterterrorism and counterinsurgency strategies that greatly diminished the threat from al Qaeda will not work against ISIS.

… What’s needed now is a strategy of “offensive containment”: a combination of limited military tactics and a broad diplomatic strategy to halt ISIS’ expansion, isolate the group, and degrade its capabilities.

Let’s be clear: The West is being confronted by an international movement led by radical Islamists, drawing on Muslim texts and perversions of Islamic doctrines and practices, and seeking to inspire and recruit others in the Middle East, Europe, and elsewhere to inflict grievous harm not just on those of other faiths but also on Muslims they consider apostates. In the case of Islamic State, the perpetrators and the majority of their victims are Muslim.

… A massive and perhaps coordinated U.S., French, European, and Russian military response against ISIS in Syria is both necessary and inevitable. Maybe the Paris attacks will create the urgency required to deal with ISIS and global. The Obama administration may ramp up airstrikes, supply local forces with better weapons, and deploy more special forces. If ISIS succeeds in striking the U.S. there will certainly be calls for Washington to do much more. But we should be under no illusions. The fight against ISIS and global jihad is the long war. It may well be the greatest foreign policy challenge of this generation.